Developments are still continuing apace in the field of delicious-food-making robots. This time we have an automated cake decorator that extrudes designs onto your cake in a process that's one part frosting, one part spirograph, and 100% awesome.

The device uses a steady stream of frosting while rotating the cake and extending and contracting the arm holding the frosting. The result is a flower-like pattern of frosting that can be run indefinitely to create increasing complex patterns.

Rather than a traditional robotics origin story for the device, the automatic cake decorator was created by a design studio named mischer'traxler. The studio has created other quasi-robotic devices in the past such as a solar powered exhibit that builds objects out of thread and a couple of designer 3D printing processes created to make the outcomes random but still useful.

The device was part of a design exhibition entitled Design Criminals Or a New Joy Into The World, organized in Austria as part of Vienna Design Week. The show explored the idea of ornamentation in design with topics ranging from floristry to tattooing to, obviously, baking. Sadly, the show didn't feature any floristry or tattooing robots.

David Daw has studied the history and future of television and has a master's in Broadcast and Electronic Communication Arts from San Francisco State University along with a BA in genre fiction from NYU.